States ask for extension of Microsoft Antitrust oversight extension

(AP) -- Ending court oversight of Microsoft's business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of the new Windows Vista operating system, a group of states said in a filing Thursday.
U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who oversees Microsoft Corp.'s adherence to the terms of a 2002 antitrust settlement, asked the software maker, the Justice Department and a group of states led by California submit reports by Thursday on the effectiveness of the consent decree.
The oversight aimed to make it possible for Microsoft's middleware competitors - who build software that links the operating system with everyday programs - to compete fairly, even if Microsoft's operating system monopoly persisted.
"Microsoft has not directly contravened these provisions," said the states' report, which was submitted by the office of California Attorney General Jerry Brown.
Antitrust concerns about Microsoft began surfacing with news of a Federal Trade Commission investigation in 1991, and in 1994 the software maker agreed to modify its contracts with PC makers to ease restrictions, which ended renewed U.S. and European antitrust investigations.

Another round of investigations led to a federal lawsuit that ended with a court declaration that Microsoft was using its operating system monopoly to squash middleware competition, and led to a settlement and the consent decree in 2002.

The California group said the January launch of Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista, changes the game.

"As a practical matter, termination of the Final Judgment means ... plaintiffs will not be able fully to assess the impact in the marketplace of Microsoft's recent introduction of Vista," the group wrote.

Florida and Utah, two of eight states plus the District of Columbia that make up the California group, didn't sign on to the report.

"Florida made the decision not to join the filing at this time because we do not completely share the Group's position that the consent decree was totally ineffective," said Sandi Copes, a spokeswoman for the state attorney general, in a statement. "We do agree, however, that we have not seen as much competition introduced as we expected."

The Utah attorney general's office declined to comment until it could confirm the papers have been received by the court.

In its report, the Justice Department said it appeared the consent decree was working. Web browsers like Mozilla's FireFox and Apple Inc.'s Safari present "renewed competition," as do the increasing popularity of programs available through a Web browser.

"The final judgments have been successful in protecting the development and distribution of middleware products and in preventing Microsoft from continuing the type of exclusionary behavior that led to the original lawsuit," Thomas O. Barnett, assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's antitrust division, said in a statement.
The Justice Department said in its report that while Microsoft's operating system market share hasn't dropped because of the consent decree, "it would misapprehend the purpose of the Final Judgments to rely on these facts to argue that the Final Judgments have been ineffective. Microsoft was never found to have acquired or increased its monopoly market share unlawfully."
In its own report, Microsoft directly countered California's claims, saying, "The Final Judgments were never designed to reduce Microsoft's share in any putative market."
But the California group said the consent decree has not led to any more competition. The report cites Microsoft's continued dominance in the operating system market and the fact that few, if any, PC makers have sold computers with non-Microsoft Web browsers set as the default, among other examples.

One of the casualties of Microsoft's practices was Netscape. Its Web browser led the field until Microsoft started bundling its own Internet Explorer with Windows and restricting how PC makers installed competing products. It was eventually bought by AOL.

Tags: M$, microsoft, 2002 antitrust settlement, Windows Vista